Posted
by
Soulskillon Saturday July 04, 2015 @11:34AM
from the different-is-scary dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Ars takes a look at a recent report from the National Academy of Sciences into the reasons why more people aren't driving electric vehicles. Of course infrastructure issues are a part of it — until charging stations are ubiquitous, the convenience factor for using a gas-powered car will weigh heavily on consumers's minds. (This despite the prevalence of outlets at home and work, where the vast majority of charging will be done even with better infrastructure.) But other reasons are much more tractable. Simply giving somebody experience with an EV tends to make the fog of mystery surrounding them dissipate, and the design of the car counts for a lot, too. It turns out car buyers don't want their EVs to look different from regular cars.

Posted
by
samzenpuson Wednesday July 01, 2015 @07:00PM
from the do-not-share dept.

gsslay writes: The Register reports that Windows 10 will include, defaulted on, "Wi-Fi Sense" which shares wifi passwords with Outlook.com contacts, Skype contacts and, with an opt-in, Facebook friends. This involves Microsoft storing the wifi passwords entered into your laptop which can then be used by any other person suitably connected to you. If you don't want someone's Windows 10 passing on your password, Microsoft has two solutions; only share passwords using their Wi-Fi Sense service, or by adding "_optout" to your SSID.

Posted
by
samzenpuson Wednesday July 01, 2015 @05:30PM
from the head-in-the-clouds dept.

StartsWithABang writes: When we talk about humans existing on worlds other than Earth, the first choice of a planet to do so on is usually Mars, a world that may have been extremely Earth-like for the first billion years of our Solar System or so. Perhaps, with enough ingenuity and resources, we could terraform it to be more like Earth is today. But the most Earth-like conditions in the Solar System don't occur on the surface of Mars, but rather in the high altitudes of Venus' atmosphere, some 50-65 km up. Despite its harsh conditions, this may be the best location for the first human colonies, for a myriad of good, scientific reasons. NASA proposed something similar last year and released a report on the subject.

Posted
by
Soulskillon Tuesday June 30, 2015 @07:24PM
from the good-luck-on-your-saving-throw dept.

New submitter ottawan- writes: In order to drive more customers to their own online gambling website, the Quebec government and Loto-Quebec (the provincial organization in charge of gaming and lotteries) are thinking about forcing the province's ISPs to block all other online gambling websites. The list of websites to be blocked will be maintained by Loto-Quebec, and the government believes that the blocking will increase government revenue by up to $27 million (CAD) per year.

It was rejected because Pluto is still bigger than Charon and while pluto wobbles around the barycentre, Charon still orbits then both thus making it a moon.

Begs to think what to call binary star systems when they have the same conditions, like Polaris (yes: the polar star is a binary star system consisting of Polaris A and Polaris B).

I love watching binaries on my telescope. Started with the realization that Ursula Majopris (the Great Dipper) also included binary stars. Mizar (the second star from the tip of the dipper handle) is a binary, as Polaris, observable with domestic telescope (I use a 6" Celestron Nexstar 6SE).